thehog said:
I see.
Sastre was good at the time trials wasn't he? I think he beat Cancellera once?
Maybe the final TT at the 2005 Vuelta? That was ludicrously wind-assisted for the final competitors though - I think Rubén Plaza's ride that day is still the fastest long TT ever recorded in a pro race.
Cerberus said:
Do you have a link to that comment? I've been trying to find it, but I don't know the exact phrasing and whenever I search for "Evans, Wiggins, clean Tour winner" or something like that I get Wiggins 2012 outburst rather than his earlier comment..
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/wiggins-wants-to-be-a-credible-tour-de-france-winner
“It would be nice to be part of it in a positive way, because there aren’t a lot of Tour winners who you can believe in,” Wiggins told L’Équipe. “For the first time last year, you had a Tour winner who everyone could believe in [Evans – ed]. He is a fantastic ambassador for the sport, he works hard, he didn’t win by showing off, but with great determination. So to be able to follow on from somebody like him would be nice, rather than doing it after somebody had a positive test hanging over his head for a year or two.”
This is the offending quote. It's not so much that he directly accuses Sastre of doping, but more that he straight up announces Evans is the first Tour winner everyone can believe in, which by proxy states that we can't believe in Sastre.
To which the charge is, what is there against Sastre? Little more than the teams he's raced for (riding for Riis etc), which surely makes him no less credible than Cadel Evans given that Evans raced for T-Mobile, Mapei and BMC (which is run by the same people as Phonak). In reality, the chances are Wiggins didn't even think of Sastre when he made that quote off the cuff, and was more pointing a direct barb at Contador.
Interestingly, later in the interview, he states something that is a bit incongruous in the light of what followed.
“There probably are [suspicions] but there weren’t for Cadel. For a lot of people, there was no doubt,” he said. “I don’t even have to respond to that question, I don’t have anything to prove. I’ve never been a **** rider.”
Here, he acknowledges that there are suspicions about his transformation from track rider to climber/long TTer extraordinaire (which of course he threw his tantrum about later), but the comparison with Evans is so bogus I don't know where to start.
1) there were at least some suspicions with Cadel, as many an old thread in the Clinic will attest, even if he's one of the guys at the top most are willing to say is
more likely than others to be clean.
2) Cadel Evans came from mountain biking, which prepares you for being a top GT contender much better than track cycling by virtue of, you know, having mountains.
3) Evans' transformation from mountain biker to GT contender came at the age of 25, and that after a year where he raced and raced well in short stage races and showed climbing potential. Wiggins' transformation from track rider to GT contender came at the age of 29, after scant evidence of any climbing potential beforehand. David Harmon nearly had a coronary when Wiggins was still in the lead group after Armstrong and Garzelli were dropped on Alpe di Siusi in the Giro, but two months later he was top 5 at the Tour.
4) Evans' Tour win came at the logical conclusion of five years where he had been consistently one of the top cyclists in the world. Many (including myself) actually felt he had passed his physical peak, and his psychological transformation had come just too late so that he wouldn't be able to follow through on his potential and get the GT win his talent probably deserved. However, he was highly fortunate in 2011 in a set of circumstances that allowed him to finally manage to win the big one; the inconsistent time penalties applied on the first stage, Contador's CAS case meaning he did the Giro instead of waiting for the Tour, the timid racing in the Pyrenées, and a field decimated by injuries. While you could argue that the Tour field this year was similarly affected with Contador's suspension and Schleck's injury, the fact remains that Evans scrambled across the line on the penultimate day, not wearing the yellow jersey until the Paris parade and won a closely fought race. It's simply not comparable with Wiggins' two week stint of dominant racing in yellow where his only realistic challenger was the whole audience falling asleep and not seeing him cross the line.
For reference, here are the CQ points progressions of the two:
Evans:
Wiggins:
(note where the projected 2012 blob is).
I think this sums up quite eloquently why people are more willing to buy Evans' "transformation" into a GT winner than Wiggins'.
Edit:
As of posting, Wiggins has posted a year in 2012 which is more than 700 higher than any of Evans' achievements.
Wiggins in 2012 has 2687 points. In the rolling year rankings he has more than 900 points over his nearest contender (Rodríguez).
Evans was top ranked CQ rider overall in 2007 with 1959.
This total is higher than any points tally by Contador or Valverde, and in fact the only tally I can find higher is Gilbert in 2011.
There are currently 6 riders from Team Sky in the top 20 CQ rankings - Wiggins 1st, Froome 5th, Boasson Hagen 6th, Cavendish 9th, Rogers 18th and Urán 20th. A seventh, Gerrans, will have acquired at least some of his points in the second half of last season with Sky.
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